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Phoenix
Born to loving parents on Corellia, Andromaeu Harbler's family soon moved to Tatooine as a result of her father's gambling debts. Although her parents did their best to keep her unaware of the problems, Andromaeu was aware that something was wrong. Additionally, their efforts would have been better spent towards trying to pay off those debts - which eventually grew to the point where the moneylender Jonathan Harbler owed, Jabba the Hutt, grew tired of excuses and decided to collect - sending out a bounty-hunter to collect Andi's father and her family, if the money wasn't there to be handed over. The money wasn't there, but Andromaeu managed to escape slavery; Jonathan attempted to win at least a bit of time by killing the bounty hunter - he failed and ended up a smouldering pile of ash. Tanya Harbler managed to distract the hunter just long enough that Andromaeu - who had only just returned from an errand her mother had sent her on - could successfully run away. The bounty hunter decided that having one person to hand over to Jabba was better than potentially having no one at all - and left, leaving Andromaeu an orphan; she later found out that the hunter had been sent by Jabba, but never discovered if her mother was alive. Considering the rumours about Jabba's treatment of female slaves, however, Andromaeu was left to hope that her mother was dead. Andromaeu renamed herself Phoenix, to try and cover herself if the bounty hunter came back. Then she gathered what she could from her home and left to learn how to survive on the streets. She learned fast - hunger is one of the most powerful motivators there are, next to pain. And if she didn't succeed, quite often she wouldn't eat that night. And, in this manner, and from a couple older children in the street gang she'd joined, she learned how to steal - shoplifting, picking pockets, fencing stolen goods. She was capable of surviving on her own then, when her gang lost out in a turf war. Rather than risk death or slavery - two of the usual options for defeated gang members - Phoenix struck out on her own. Setting up camp in one of the neutral zones surrounding a small, charity-run clinic, Ix scraped out a sort of living; she didn't go hungry, most nights - but she didn't really ever have quite enough to eat, either; had things continued on that way, in spite of the vitamin suplements she was given by the clinic, she would have ended up sterile and stunted for life. As it was, she was lucky that she started puberty late - by the time she started, she was getting three regular meals a day, in quantities large enough to give her the energy she needed for the growth spurts she went through. By the time she was fourteen, Ix had been on her own for about four and a half years; the remains of the old gang had died, been absorbed into other gangs, or otherwise vanished. She hadn't come to the attention of any local law enforcement agencies (such as there were), because no one on Tatooine - with the possible exception of those she stole from - cared about one pickpocket more or less. But the run of luck that had kept her out of the eyes of the law ended once Phoenix started trying to earn a bit more money than petty theft could garner, by selling information to one of the big gang leaders - Maya, of the Black Diamonds. They were spice-runners, and probably ran other drugs and various illegal items as well - spice was just the one they ran the most, since it earned the best. Unfortunately, at the time, Ix had semi-befriended an Imperial officer - one of the few she'd ever really like or see as truly human. He caught her at her attempts to sponge information from him, and arrested her for treason against the Empire...with the sentence to be carried out immediately. He transported her to the Imperial outpost in Mos Eisley, and executed her there. Or at least...officially she was executed. The records, later, stated that Andromaeu Harbler had been executed for treason. Phoenix, however, continued to live; the officer, taking pity on her when her last words were "I don't want to die," smuggled her out and told her not to come back to Mos Eisley. It didn't work like that, of course. Phoenix came back, like the apocryphal cat - and she joined the Black Diamonds. She got her own ship, the Ashes to Flame, having won the ship in a bet, and she became a trader for the Diamonds - although she didn't ever transport spice. Things were going well, for Ix - even if she never did get her personal effects back from the officer, which did rather piss her off. The Diamonds were the closest she'd had to a family in years - and Maya was like a mother; Ix loved her. Most of the Diamonds probably did - either they loved her, or they were intimidated by her. Or both. And then the worst happened. While Maya was negotiating an alliance between the Corporate Sector Authority and the Diamonds, she vanished - and so did Ix's boyfriend at the time, Sidarios. Ix was pissed that he'd vanished - especially since it had been just after they'd slept together for the first time - but Sid's vanishing paled in comparison to Maya's. And they never found out what happened to her. There were a variety of theories - that she'd been killed, that she'd been kidnapped, even that she'd just run away - but no proof for any of them...and she never came back to say what had happened. Sid, unfortunately, did show up a couple years later, attempting to kill Ix to try and sponge some "stain" off his record (presumably the stain of having associated with her) - he failed, and Ix cut his balls off for his pains (although, admittedly, only after he'd died; someone else wound up shooting him). But in the aftermath of Maya's vanishing, the Diamonds came close to falling apart. It was only that Ix was too stubborn to let them drift away that kept them together. She attempted to take over the Diamonds to hold them together and, surprisingly, succeeded. Her success, considering that she was 14 and relatively new to the gang, was startling even to her; she became the new leader, but she had only a vague idea of how to lead - and others resented her, for having seized the leadership role. She struggled to keep the gang together and to lead effectively - and, since she was learning on the job, she made mistakes. Some of them big enough to spur people into trying to kill her. After the second attempt (the first having been Sid), she hired Aluksander as her bodyguard to protect her from further attempts. The two bonded over Maya's disappearance and, after a time, they became an item - although Ix did take a brief break with a boy closer to her age, and she wasn't averse to one-night stands, having apparently never heard of the word "monogamy". About six months after Maya's disappearance, Ix was arrested by the Imperials for smuggling - although she hadn't been carrying spice. In fact, she was arrested for carrying ship fuel without a permit (although she did have one); having to represent herself, and with an unsympathetic judge, Ix was given a sentence of a year on Kessel. She was shipped off to the prison planet, and she mined spice for roughly three months before being trapped when one of the mine-shafts collapsed. Managing to free herself, along with the others she'd been trapped with, Ix served another month and a half of her sentence before being smuggled out - another smuggler, one who owed the Diamonds a favour, had found out where she was. Making arrangements with the warden, Ix was smuggled out and, officially, died again (her alias of the time, Anne Starwanderer, was reported dead in a later mine collapse). Her treatment during her time on Kessel, however, and her treatment during her arrest and trial spurred Ix to start looking for an explanation as to the government's behaviour. She'd had very little education...but she was quite certain that things weren't supposed to work the way they had. What she found wasn't really much in the way of explanation: she found the Rebellion - and joined it. That, from many of the Diamonds' eyes, would have been bad enough. Worse, to them, was that she brought the group itself into the Rebellion. As Ix's energy shifted from leading the Diamonds to fighting the Empire, she started getting more resistance from some Diamonds - more from her neglecting them for something as seemingly unimportant as fighting the Empire, than because they wanted to take over. And that wasn't the only problem: a couple months before the end, Ix fought with Thane and they parted ways. Shortly after, the Empire posted a bounty for Phoenix. Worried by this, Ix resorted to a combination of makeup - both street makeup and stage makeup - and hiding. She grew tired of hiding, however, and left one of her shelters without remembering to check that her disguise was still in place. Spotted by an Imperial observer, Ix was captured by the Stormtroopers and taken to Kessel again. Ix is uncertain of what the Diamonds did, from this point on. She suspects they abandoned her, but holds hope that some of them, at least, made an effort to rescue her. It's a slim hope, however, considering how things turned out. The Imperials tortured Ix for information on the Rebellion - she maintains that they didn't break her, and that they killed her because she would tell them nothing. This much, at least, is true - although it's debatable whether she actually managed to resist being broken. She also maintains that she was murdered by a new type of weapon, similar to a combination of a flamethrower and a pulse rifle, but this can't be either confirmed or denied. After her death, she was gathered up and taken to Judgement. Unfortunately for Ix, there was a price attached to never having really learned any morals - and the price was that she was condemned to Hell until she repented for her sins. And these sins were many: murder, adultery, a willingness to give in to her temper, a love of taking 'trophies' of flesh from those she killed - a trait she picked up from Maya, theft, and hard drinking were the main features. While waiting to be judged, one of the angels taught Ix to read and write properly. And the Powers That Be promised her that, once she understood why what she'd done was wrong and repented for it, she could return and try again. Unfortunately for what might have been, a demon managed to sneak into the hell of her universe and convinced her that he could give her the power to avenge herself on those who had killed her and those who had abandoned her to her death. The process of gaining this power meant turning into a demon - and Ix was, once the procedure was finished, exiled to Necromundus. The Ascendants wanted nothing to do with her now, and the Descendants viewed her as a dangerous, potentially unstable experiment: rather than being a true demon, only existing in a physical form from force of will alone, Ix's physical form was altered until it was appropriate. She was covered with tattooed runes to bind her to the Descendants, to give her demonic powers, and to keep the changes in place; she's very quiet on the subject of whether the runes do anything other than this. Now living in Necromundus, Ix has reunited with Thane and is in the process of attempting to make up with him. She's also one of the debt collectors for the newly opened Brimstone Financial. =Badges= Category:Necromundus Characters